Man shot at supermarket faces quiz

Detectives are hoping to start interviewing a man shot by police in a supermarket hours before a woman's body was found in a bedsit.

The suspect, named locally as 32-year-old Tomas Uptas, has been under arrest in hospital receiving treatment since being shot in the arm in a Morrisons supermarket on Thursday evening.

Police opened fire in the store in the Wincheap area of Canterbury, Kent, after a man seen by staff and customers armed with a gun apparently ignored orders to drop it.

Hours later, in the early hours of Friday morning, the body of a woman, believed to be Loreta Raupiene, was found in the bedsit she shared with Uptas at the Ambassador Guest House in Victoria Road in the city.

A post-mortem examination was conducted on her on Saturday but police are refusing to disclose its findings until Uptas has been questioned. It is understood that will not be until Monday at the earliest.

Kent Police are not confirming any identities at this stage but are linking the shooting and the discovery of the body.

Guest house landlord Kulvinder Singh Dosanjh, 55, said Ms Raupiene was eastern European and had previously lived in a first-floor bedsit with her husband before another man moved in about six months ago.

Customers at the supermarket reported seeing an unkempt man carrying a handgun under the sleeve of his coat in the beer and wine aisle before armed units arrived. One loud shot was heard to ring out around the store, prompting frantic staff to evacuate customers as around 60 people shopped.

Shopper Pamela Elvidge, 58, told how she saw a "scruffy" man who appeared intoxicated carrying a weapon and who told her and her partner to "move along, move along". She said: "I thought it was a toy gun because you don't expect someone to be walking round carrying a real gun in a supermarket."

No-one else was injured at the supermarket and a weapon, revealed to be a Power Line 15XTCO2 BB handgun, was recovered from the scene. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was notified about the shooting but later decided that Kent Police's professional standards department could continue the inquiry at a local level.